Tudor said to lose 2 more traders as departures mount

Published 6:58 pm, Friday, February 8, 2013

Allen Chu and Ashwin Ranganathan, equity traders at Tudor Investment Corp., quit after more than seven years, bringing to at least nine the number of departures since December from the $11.6 billion hedge fund run by Greenwich resident Paul Tudor Jones, according to people familiar with the matter.

Chu and Ranganathan, who were partners working out of Tudor's Singapore office, left last month as the fund moves away from equity trading in Asia to focus more on macro strategies, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the fund is private. Macro funds aim to profit from economic trends by trading everything from currencies to bonds.

Tudor is looking to hire traders across strategies in the U.S. and U.K., where the fund also experienced departures, one of the people said. U.K.-based macro traders Mary Davis and Christiana Toutet, who worked as a team, left in mid-January after more than four years at Tudor, as did Susan Arnott, an equities trader who joined in 2011, the people said. Michael Georgiou is another macro trader in the U.K. to leave last month, the person said.

Tudor, which produced an average annual gain of 19.9 percent from its main fund since it was started in 1986, has failed to match those returns in recent years as macro funds struggled to predict the direction of markets. The Tudor BVI Fund returned 6.3 percent last year and 2.2 percent in 2011, one of the people said.

The fund gained 4.3 percent last month, the person said.

Shawn Pattison, a spokesman for Greenwich, Connecticut- based Tudor, declined to comment.

Macro funds lost 0.1 percent last month, 0.7 percent last year and 7.43 percent in 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 5.2 percent in January, 16 percent in 2012 and 2.1 percent in the previous year, including dividends.

Larry Petrella, a director of U.S. equities who previously worked at Stamford-based Diamondback Capital Management, quit Tudor in January after two years, Hedge Fund Alert reported last week. Tudor plans to replace Petrella with a portfolio manager focused on media and telecom stocks, one of the people said.

Angel Ubide, who was a director of economics working out of the fund's Washington offices, left in December after 11.5 years, two of the people said. Ubide joined New York hedge fund D.E. Shaw last month, Darcy Bradbury, a spokeswoman for D.E. Shaw, said in a telephone interview.

Andrew McMillan, who oversaw a commodity team in Singapore, left Tudor to start his own business, a person familiar with his departure said last month. Tudor is expected to invest some of its own capital in McMillan's venture, the person said.

The former Tudor employees either declined to comment on their departure or didn't return telephone or e-mail messages seeking comment.

Tudor had 185 employees involved in investment-advisory roles, including research, according to a regulatory filing in November. The firm had 370 workers, excluding clerical staff, according to the filing.